Mutated genetic supertrout developed in lab After ten years of tinkering with DNA in a Rhode Island lab, a top fish boffin claims he has created a genetically enhanced mutant supertrout. "Our findings are quite stunning," says Professor Terry Bradley, an expert on trout, salmon, flounder and tuna. "The results have significant implications." Bradley says he has managed …
Can they not experiment with something interesting like great white sharks. Or lions. Or gorillas.
Saving the trout farming industry a few quid is, i am almost certain, a very noble cause, but surely what the world really wants is to see some massive uber predator. Preferably a pair of king kongs that can duke it out for our entertainment.... possibly with ant n dec hosting.
This monstrosity should be quarantined. If people farm this hideous perversion it will eventually interbreed with the wild populations. Do I need to explain why this would be disastrous? Some redneck that works in the lab mopping the floors will steal a few specimen and soon our rivers will be overrun by these mutants. This research should not have been funded!
Or someone expressing a legitimate concern that if these fish were released into the wild, they may outcompete the natural species, in much the same way as introducing a foreign species is usually bad for an ecosystem?
So, in response to you calling someone a frankentard, can I take the opportunity to call you a 'tardtard'* for your willingness to stick the suffix 'tard' onto any word?
*Irony is intentional, just in case it doesn't go without saying.
Bigger muscles cost more food to grow and maintain, but at some point provide no advantage to a trout. Evolution has already selected the ideal amount of muscle for a trout. If you double the amount of muscle on some trout, and release them into the wild they will stand a smaller chance of survival than normal trout.
It is like the insecticide gene placed in some plants. The gene requires lots of energy to produce insecticide. It is an advantage in a field dosed with loads of fertiliser. In the real world, other plants not wasting energy on insecticide grow faster and overshadow plants with the insecticide gene.
Moving a gene from one species to another is challenging enough. Selecting the required genes to give a significant advantage compared to the results of millions of years of natural selection is beyond our ability.
The trouble is that once the alien DNA is introduced to an ecosystem, it takes millions of years to breed it out again - if that ever happens. The wild Atlantic salmon DNA has been disturbed effectively for all time by allowing farmed salmon to escape. As has been pointed out elsewhere, introducing a different strain can upset a whole ecosystem, resulting in native species being endangered or driven to extinction. Look at the introduction of ruff to Loch Lomond by anglers using them as livebait: now the powan or "freshwater herring", which was perfectly adapted to the environment, needs human measures to preserve it - a species that has existed in and that has been perfectly adapted to that environment since the last Ice Age. The laissez-faire approach to introducing alien DNA is irresponsible and doesn't necessarily result in any improvement.
...Mr. Burns was feeling when Marge fed him Blinky.
Just eating chickens full of estrogen made American girls start "blooming" at age 11 or 12. I think much of the overweight problem is also animal feed additive related. This is the same problem but from a gene splicing way.
This is basically a gene that makes steroids. Yeah that's gonna be healthy.
I insist that the pool's death-dealing properties be administered by having the troublesome operatives stand on a platform above it, said platform collapsing at the press of a button by an evil finger (or, possibly, collapsing when activated by a head-mounted device), relying on gravity to propel operative flesh towards hungry transgenic mouths. I sense a new Bond film coming on ...
I'll get me coat, the one with the secret pockets and the lever that makes it turn into a motorbike.
But you have to admit this is a good first step.
First create something that can carry the dead weight of the energy weapon THEN add the energy weapon. They have probably had the gene splices for the Laser for the last ten years, but the fish wasn't strong enough to do more than sit on the bottom of the pool. Expect another anouncment soon.
Now if you'll excuse me I must see about getting my pre-order in for the next version to stock my moat.
Mines the one with the keys to the secret lair in a volcano and the copy of "How to be an Evil super villain"
Every natural fish is a mutant compared to every other natural fish out there so why is it ok to eat natural mutants rather than ones mutated by ourselves?
You know when you cook and eat something what its dna was before does not really matter after it has been though a cooking process and our digestive process.
Anyway we have been genetically modifying creatures for are plates for thousands of years now though elective breeding, you think the pig that provided the pork your eat is a natural creature? what about the beef from cows or chickens? none of them are as they where in the wild yet a lot of you have no problem eating them.
Btw after watching the video i can not find where the guy said that these fish get bigger with the same food but if he did say that all it could mean is that they grow quicker which means they process food better, you do not fully consume every thing you eat you know a lot of it gets flushed though your system.
Hmmm i wonder why no bioscientist has not gone nuts yet and filled an island with really mutated creatures Dr Moreau style.
Here in the Great Lakes region of the USA we are staging a last-ditch effort to keep 2 species of Asian carp from getting through the Chicago Ship Canal and into the Great Lakes ecosystem. These giant (up to 100 lbs.) and aggressive carp have already overrun the Mississippi River after an accidental release . They have a nasty habit of jumping at small-boat operators when they heat the sound of outboard or inboard engines and have caused many fishermen to require trips to the ER after an encounter.
We don't need these GM Frankenfish in the ecosystem!
Watching paint dry or grass grow is usually preferable to watching the fishing shows on cable tv here in the US. When I read the article, I imagined how much video of Bill Dance being yanked off the front of his bass boat by a 9-foot trout could improve such a show.
Then I read the comment about the asian carp in the Chicago river.
Hey Bill, we have job for you, up in Illinois, nothing too difficult....
Wow, we have so many people who can confidently claim that a genetically modified trout is an ecological calamity just because it exists, and will be poisonous to eat anyway - and deduce all of this from nothing more than a pop science article, too! I didn't know there were so many top geneticists on the Reg comment section!
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